The United States is a restless nation. In 2004, nearly 40 million people moved either around the corner or across the country. More than half of those internal migrants relocated into rental units rather than owner-occupied homes. MyNewPlace, an Internet company that debuted Monday, is angling to profit from all that roaming.

While the real estate business is regarded as a laggard on the Internet, there are plenty of places to look for a new apartment on the web. Venture-backed MyNewPlace will compete with established companies like Apartments.com and eBay-owned Rent.com. The exact size of the online apartment listing market is hard to peg, but an optimistic estimate places it in the neighborhood of $3 billion.

With an eye on that cash, Trinity Ventures in Menlo Park, California led an $8-million first round of funding for MyNewPlace. In addition to traditional venture capital, several property companies invested in San Francisco-based MyNewPlace, including the Lane Company and ConAm Management Corporation.

“We took seriously the fact that some of the thought leaders in the industry took it seriously,” said Noel Fenton, a general partner at Trinity Ventures, and a MyNewPlace board member.

‘Behind the Curve’

MyNewPlace enters a market in a state of flux, said Kevin Thompson, senior marketing director for AvalonBay Communities in Alexandria, Virginia, which manages 45,000 properties in the U.S. and has signed a contract with MyNewPlace to put its listings on the new company’s site. Mr. Thompson says that real estate is “behind the curve” when it comes to technology.

But in the past three years, AvalonBay has watched the number of leads originating from the Internet climb to 65 percent from 30 percent. Meantime, leads from newspapers have dropped to 5 percent from 15 percent.

Mr. Thompson said his company puts many listings on Craigslist, the free classified service that allows users to advertise everything from casual sexual encounters to vacant apartments. He said that while Craigslist was formerly most useful in dense coastal cities, it is becoming more common away from major metropolises. MyNewPlace hopes its 6 million listings, mapping features, and a clean, banner-ad-free home page that mimics Google’s spartan interface will lure users.

But it’s not just Craigslist that MyNewPlace has to worry about. Companies that arrived on the scene before MyNewPlace have been forging relationships and experimenting with business models. Rent.com, which eBay bought in February 2005, has a business plan similar to MyNewPlace’s. Rather than pay a fee between $200 and $300 for an ad on an apartment listing web site, companies like AvalonBay pay MyNewPlace or Rent.com only when a lease is signed.

Mr. Thompson says he will pay MyNewPlace a fixed sum in the neighborhood of $250 for each signed lease. MyNewPlace pays the renter $100. When the rental market is slow, and Mr. Thompson is eager for business, $250 for a single lease is worth the money, he says. But in a brisk market, when a single $250 advertisement can generate three or four leases, MyNewPlace is less attractive.

“That’s the downside of the business. The more successful they are, the more expensive they are,” said Mr. Thompson.

Unique Feature

MyNewPlace also allows property management companies to “turn off” the service within 24 hours if leases start flowing from other sources, Mr. Thompson said. It’s a feature competitors don’t allow.

One of those competitors is eBay’s Rent.com. While an eBay spokesperson declined to say how much money the company made in 2005, industry insiders put it at about $45 million. It’s a matter of record that the site’s traffic grew 87 percent from 19.7 million to 35.8 million between 2004 and 2005.

John Helm, MyNewPlace’s CEO and founder, who also founded AllApartments/Spring Street in 1997, said he predicts similar growth for his company.

“By the time they are at $100 million, we will be at $45 million.”